Friday, January 11, 2013

India 인도여행

I had a great winter vacation visiting one of my best friends from college Naveen John. The trip was basically two parts: the 9 day Tour of Nilgiris and then a 10 day trip with Naveen around central southern India.

Tour of Nilgiris
This was a 9 day tour/ race. Everyday we rode anywhere from 60-170km and on 5 of the stages there were individual time trials that were fairly short (all under 30km). Since I'm not a very good time trialist I wasn't expecting anything spectacular from the race but I was still hoping to do ok. After the first 2 TTs I was sitting in 6th overall and thinking I could move up a bit but then disaster struck! I got food poisoning and ended up spending all night on the toilet before the one of the big stages and I couldn't ride it. I was pretty sick for about a day and a half and then I stared recovering. After missing one day I was out of the race classification and just rode the other 2 TTs for fun. My friend Naveen (who is a really good time trialist) ended up getting second overall to his teammate Lokesh. Other than getting sick the tour was a lot of fun.
I met some great new friends and got to ride on some amazing roads in addition to seeing a lot of southern India. The riding was half in an area called the Nilgiris which was a mountain area that sat at about 2000m. The mountains however were basically 99% covered in team plantations which made for some pretty scenery and allowed you to constantly have a great view of the terrain around you. The rides we did on the middle stages of the tour definitely rank with some of the best rides I have ever done in my life with awesome roads and tons of climbing. The second to last day finished with a 40km+ long descent which was by far the longest downhill I have ever done.
Riding in India was nice too as all along the road there are little shops selling snacks that are super cheap in addition to other people selling things like coconuts and fresh fruit. The roads were pretty bad in some areas but overall they were much nicer than I expected.
I was impressed by the organizers and volunteers of the tour too. They really put in a lot of effort to make sure everything ran smoothly and we stayed in some really nice places also.

After the race we headed back to Bangalore which is where Naveen lives and got ready for our big road trip! Christmas was nice too, we spent it with Naveen's parents and had a lot of amazing food. Naveen's mom and dad are both great cooks and every day we spent at their house we were completely stuffed from eating all of the amazing food they would make for breakfast, lunch and dinner! The best food I had in India was definitely had there! They also taught me the fine art of eating with my hands which is how most people in India eat!

We set off on our trip together first by taking a night bus to Kudremukh National park. The park is north of Banglore about 9 hours on really bumpy twisty roads. Needless to say neither of us slept very well on the bus however when we arrived at 7am we were ready to go. Kudremukh national park is an old iron ore mining area that has now been turned into a park with great hiking. After arriving at the park office to get some more information we were informed that we could stay at a guest house at the start of the trail. We then took a local bus and an auto rickshaw (three wheeler taxi) up a crazy dirt road and arrived at our accomodation. After dropping off our bags we headed off on the hike to the top which was about 10km each way. The hike was on a pretty tough trail but Naveen and I kept our pace up to make sure we would make it back before dark. The whole hike was on these huge hills covered in knee high grass making for really nice views in all directions. The top of the mountain was amazing too and had about a 1000m drop off one side! We also got to see some wild buffalo along the hike. After arriving back at the house we cleaned up by swimming in a waterfall! For dinner the wife of the owner of the house cooked us the spiciest chicken either of us had ever eaten.
There is a lot more to write but I will have to write it in my next blog! Look at my Facebook page if you want to see some pictures too!